Afterlife Constructs, Death Anxiety, and Life Reviewing: The Importance of Religion as a Moderating Variable

A diverse sample (N = 389) completed a death anxiety scale and a series of questions dealing with frequency of church attendance, self-rating of religiosity, and afterlife concerns. Variance in both death anxiety and religiosity was great between age groups than across gender. Afterlife items tended to have higher correlations with death anxiety than did either self-rated religiosity or frequency of church-going. It is suggested that elements of religiosity have important interrelationships with the developmental process of the life review in old age.